Even before the Anschluß, cities in Austria had attempted to capitalise on their ties to the Führer. Hitler’s plans for Linz are well known. He wanted to transform the city on the Danube into a cultural metropolis, with theatres, museums, art galleries and an enormous stadium. Tourism officials there saw a way to cash in on Hitler’s affection for his boyhood town. Linz styled itself first as the ‘City of the Führer’s Youth’, then as the ‘Hometown of the Führer’, and finally as the ‘City of the Foundation of the Greater German Reich’ (Gründungsstadt des Großdeutschen Reichs). When Hitler announced in March 1938 that he was personally adopting the city, it quickly became the ‘Adopted City of the Führer’. While the entire region of Upper Austria called itself the ‘Führer’s Home District’, individual Austrian towns highlighted their early support for Nazism. Graz was especially gratified when Hitler bestowed the honorary title ‘City of the People’s Uprising (Volkserhebung)’. It used this designation often in its own publicity. A Shell roadmap also referred to Graz as the ‘City of the People’s Uprising’, noting that the town had received this appellation from Hitler in recognition for its ‘self-sacrificing, tenacious perseverance in the fight for Greater Germany’.

Semmens (68)

Standing beside the
desk in the Kaiservilla in Bad Ischl at which, on July 28 1914, Franz
Joseph signed the declaration of war against the Kingdom of Serbia, thus
signalling the start of the First World War- in Kennan's phrase, "the seminal event of the 20th century."

The Declaration itself, and on the right the town honouring Hitler after the anschluß.

Braunau am Inn

The house in which Adolf Hitler was born on 20 April 1889. According to Franz Martin, in his Braunauer Hauschronik (Salzburg 1943), it originally consisted of two buildings, the owners of which were can be identified from the 17th century. From 1826 it had the address Vorstadt 219, being renamed Salzburger Vorstadt 15 in 1890. The street name was changed to "Adolf-Hitler-Straße" after the anschluß. The house itself had been half-owned by Franz Xaver and Helene Dafner from 1888, who turned it into a guest house. On October 17 1890, Franz Dafner died and his widow remarried in 1891 to Jacob Bachleitner. The name of the guest house remained "Zum Hirschen" until December 18, 1912 when the property was sold to Josef Pommer from Laab near Braunau for a price of 58,000 crowns and the inn renamed "Zum braune Hirschen." This name proved problematic given the location of another guest house called "Zum Goldenen Hirschen". Immediately after the occupation of Braunau by American troops on May
2, 1945, a German battalion attempted to blow up Hitler's birthplace,
but American soldiers thwarted this attack. On November 1, 1945, "at the
place from which Hitler came into the world" an exhibition
was opened, showing the horror of concentration camps to the
visitors.

Hitler's birthplace during the Nazi era and today. It was here in a room on the first floor of that Hitler’s mother Klara gave birth to him on April 20, 1889.

The room in which Hitler was born, shown on the right in a 1938 postcard.

Before the anschluß...

...and the year after, still displaying the name Gasthof des Josef Pomme under the swastika

According to UPI, the initials "MB" on the wrought iron front door are for Hitler's private secretary Martin Bormann and provide the only evidence, other than the reputation, of the building's history. Bormann bought the house in 1938 from the Pommer family for an astonishing 150,000 Reichmarks (four times its actual value) for the purpose, according to Der Spiegel, "in the hopes of eventually turning it into a monument on par with the birthplaces of Stalin and Mussolini." The building was renovated and transformed into a cultural centre with a Volksbücherei- the original sign remains on the façade. The house was opened to the public on April 18 1943 as a library on the ground floor and as a gallery on the 1st and
2nd floors. From spring 1943 to late summer 1944 exhibitions took place
in the "Braunau Gallery in the Führer-Geburtshaus", where pictures and
sculptures were shown by artists from Braunau and the surrounding area.

The stone memorial in front was erected a fortnight before the centenary
of Hitler's birth from a quarry on the grounds of the former Mauthausen
Concentration Camp, near Linz. The inscription reads: "For Peace,
Freedom and Democracy. Never Again Fascism. Millions of Dead Remind
[us]".

His birthplace was returned in the early 1950s to the
former owners, who had bought the house during the annexation of
Austria, as part of a reserve comparison from the Republic of Austria.
In 2012, a Russian Duma deputy wanted to buy the house and demolish it. After unsuccessful negotiations, the Ministry of Interior in 2016
considered expropriation of the owner to gain control over the use of
the building. In an interview in October 2016, the Austrian
Minister of the Interior, Wolfgang Sobotka, declared that the house was
to be demolished and a new building built. Sobotka referred to an
alleged recommendation by a historian commission. Hannes Waidbacher, the
mayor of Braunau who was sitting in the Historian Commission, contradicted the fact that in the Commission's recommendation "nothing
was a demolition", but a "profound architectural transformation" was
recommended which would be the "recognition and symbolic power of the
building permanently." Cornelia Sulzbacher, head of the
Upper Austrian Provincial Archives, also surprised herself with the
statements of the minister and also said that there was only the
recommendation to change the appearance so that the house could no
longer be used as a symbol.

Adolf-Hitler-Straße in 1938 and today.

The Stadttorturm, Salzburger Tor, adorned with the swastika before the war. The mural on the building beside the gate commemorates the execution of Johann Philipp Palm by the French on August 26, 1806 in Braunau. The image on the right shows his arrest
beside a photo of an alley today.

The year before the Bavarian Elector was made King of Bavaria by
Napoleon and
ordered to support Napoleon in all his wars with a force of 30,000
men, making Bavaria a vassal of the French. This was
'The Time of Germany's Deepest Humiliation,' a term used continually by
Hitler throughout his career inspired by an event that occurred in
Braunau. After the pamphlet Deutschland in seiner tiefen Erniedrigung was
published earlier that year which strongly attacked Napoleon and the
brutality of his troops in Bavaria Palm, then a Nürnberg bookseller who
helped to circulate the pamphlet, was denounced to the French by a
Bavarian police agent. Napoleon had Palm arrested and handed over to a military
commission at Braunau, denying him any right of defence. After a mock
trial he was shot the following day without having betrayed the
pamphlet's author. It
has been stated that this statue erected to him in 1866 on the site of
his execution was one of the first public objects that made an
impression on Hitler as child. As he himself wrote on the first page of
Mein Kampf,

this
little frontier town appeared to me as the symbol of a great task. But
in another regard also it points to a lesson that is applicable to our
day. Over a hundred years ago this sequestered spot was the scene of a
tragic calamity which affected the whole German nation and will be
remembered for ever, at least in the annals of German history. At the
time of our Fatherland's deepest humiliation a bookseller, Johannes
Palm, uncompromising nationalist and enemy of the French, was put to
death here because he had the misfortune to have loved Germany well. He
obstinately refused to disclose the names of his associates, or rather
the principals who were chiefly responsible for the affair. Just as it
happened with Leo Schlageter. The former, like the latter, was denounced
to the French by a Government agent. It was a director of police from
Augsburg who won an ignoble renown on that occasion and set the example
which was to be copied at a later date by the neo-German officials of
the REICH under Herr Severing's regime.

Hitler returning on March 12, 1938 during the invasion of Austria at
15:50, crossing the Austro-German border at Braunau. The following
members of his staff accompanied him: the Chief of the High Command of
the Wehrmacht, General Keitel; the Reich Press Chief, Dietrich;
Reichsleiters Bormann and Bouhler, and finally Gauleiter Bürckel. As
Hitler passed through the streets of his native town, all its church
bells chimed, and he was greeted with thunderous applause of a gathering
numbering in the tens of thousands. Kershaw writes how

[s]hortly before 4p.m.
that afternoon, Hitler crossed the Austrian border over the narrow bridge at
his birthplace, Braunau am Inn. The church‑bells were ringing. Tens of
thousands of people (most of them from outside Braunau), in ecstasies of joy,
lined the streets of the small town. But Hitler did not linger. Propaganda
value, not sentiment, had dictated his visit. Braunau played its brief symbolic
part. That sufficed. The cavalcade passed on its triumphal progression to Linz.

Hitler's visit inspired the stamp commemorating his 50th birthday which was issued on April 13, 1939. It can be seen that the stamp and photograph were taken at slightly different times along the route.

Fischlham

This building is notable for being the location of Adolf Hitler's first two years of formal schooling, from 1895-1897, although it no longer serves as one.

The year his father retired from the customs service at the age of fifty-eight, the six-year-old Adolf entered the public school in the village of Fischlham, a short distance southwest of Linz. This was in 1895. For the next four or five years the restless old pensioner moved from one village to another in the vicinity of Linz. By the time the son was fifteen he could remember seven changes of address and five different schools. For two years he attended classes at the Benedictine monastery at Lambach, near which his father had purchased a farm. There he sang in the choir, took singing lessons and, according to his own account,16 dreamed of one day taking holy orders. Finally the retired customs official settled down for good in the village of Leonding, on the southern outskirts of Linz, where the family occupied a modest house and garden.

Shirer (9-10)

Leonding

Hitler revisiting Leonding during the anschluß on March 13, 1938 with St. Michael's church in the background where he proceeded to pay his respects at his parents' grave. The grave has recently been destroyed by the municipal authorities. Robert Eiter, with the Upper Austrian Network Against Racism and Right-Extremism, said the latest incident was on All Saints day, on 1 November last year, when an urn was left with the inscription "Unvergesslich" – German for "unforgettable" and alluding to the ϟϟ. "A lot of flowers and wreaths were deposited there from people who clearly were admirers," he said. "It had to do with the son and not the parents." Brunner, the mayor, said he was happy with the decision to remove the tombstone and Eiter said most Leonding residents also supported it.

Hitler's house on Michaelsbergstraße 16 remains intact.

Linz

The Hitlers had moved house several times within Braunau, and had subsequently been uprooted on a number of occasions. In November 1898, a final move for Alois took place when he bought a house with a small plot of attached land in Leonding, a village on the outskirts of Linz. From now on, the family settled in the Linz area, and Adolf – down to his days in the bunker in 1945 – looked upon Linz as his home town. Linz reminded him of the happy, carefree days of his youth. It held associations with his mother. And it was the most ‘German’ town of the Austrian Empire. It evidently symbolized for him the provincial small-town Germanic idyll – the image he would throughout his life set against the city he would soon come to know, and detest: Vienna.

Kershaw (7)

Hitler driving through the hauptplatz where an enormous crowd had gathered at the market place to await Hitler’s arrival. Tremendous enthusiasm was evident in Ward Price’s impressive live radio report. Speaking in German on the Austrian broadcast services, the British journalist congratulated the Austrian people on the advent of this day.

Hitler’s triumphant ride from Braunau to Linz took nearly four hours, since the Mercedes could barely work its way through the jubilant crowds. Fifteen kilometres out of Linz, Seyss-Inquart, Glaise- Horstenau and Himmler, together with other National Socialists, awaited the Führer.

When his car finally reached Linz, it was dark. Hitler stepped out upon the small balcony of the City Hall in Linz and listened to the welcoming address by Seyss-Inquart. Thereupon, Hitler gave a speech that was frequently disrupted by thunders of applause from the audience below:

Germans! German Volksgenossen! Herr Bundeskanzler!

I thank you for your words of greeting. But above all I thank you who have assembled here and testified to the fact that it is not the will and desire of only a few to establish this great Reich of the German race, but the wish and the will of the German Volk!

May there be those among you this evening, our reputed international truth-seekers, who will not only perceive for themselves this reality, but admit it afterwards, too. When I first set forth from this city, I carried within me exactly the same devout pledge that fills me today. Try to fathom my inner emotion at having finally made this faithful pledge come true after so many long years.

The fact that Providence once summoned me forth from this city to the leadership of the Reich, must have meant it was giving me a special assignment, and it can only have been the assignment of restoring my cherished home to the German Reich! I have believed in this assignment, I have lived and fought for it, and I believe I have now fulfilled it! May you all witness and vouch for this!

I do not know when you yourselves will be summoned. I hope the time is not far off. Then you shall be asked to stand up to your own pledge, and it is my belief that I will then be able to point to my homeland with pride before the entire German Volk.

The outcome must then prove to the world that any further attempt to tear this Volk asunder will be in vain. Just as you will then be under an obligation to make your contribution to this German future, the whole of Germany is likewise willing to make its contribution. And this it is already doing today!

May you see in the German soldiers who are marching here this very hour from all the Gaus of the Reich fighters willing and prepared to make sacrifices for the unity of the great German Volk as a whole, and for the power and the glory and the splendour of the Reich, now and forever! Deutschland, Sieg Heil!

Vienna

Immediately after the German invasion of March 1938, the Viennese began to threaten, torment, and deprive Jewish fellow citizens as the Schutzstaffel (ϟϟ ) began to throw them out of their homes. Of the nearly 200,000 Jewish Viennese, around 120,000 were robbed and emigrated (the most famous refugee was Sigmund Freud), about 60,000 were murdered. The Viennese town administration was reorganised according to the national socialist pattern. On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the death of the German composer, the Nazi administration celebrated a Mozart year in the framework of the "Mozart Week of the German Reich". From March 17, 1944, more than fifty air raids were carried out on Vienna, which destroyed about one-fifth of the city. Not by fighting, but by plunder, the St. Stephen's Cathedral, which had previously surrendered the air war without a bomb hit, also set fire. In April 1945 came the eight-day battle for Vienna, which ended with the defeat of the Wehrmacht and the occupation by the Red Army, which had advanced from Hungary. Consequences of the time of National Socialism The effect of the capital function of Vienna in the monarchy, effective until 1938, ended with the beginning of the Nazi era. The spiritual and artistic life of Vienna suffered, above all, through the persecution of the Jews, an enormous, not to be compensated, bloodletting. The emergence of the Eastern bloc made Vienna a meeting point for the spies from the East and the West, but slowed down the economic and scientific reconstruction of Vienna. More than 20 per cent of the house stock was completely or partly destroyed, almost 87,000 apartments were uninhabitable. More than 3,000 bombs were counted in the city area, numerous bridges lying in ruins, canals, gas and water pipes had suffered serious damage. At first, the problem was solved, and the city had to be made operational again.

From 1 September 1945 to 27 July 1955 Vienna was divided in its borders before 1938 into four sectors. The brightened areas were integrated into Greater Vienna in 1938 and belonged to the Soviet occupation zone of Lower Austria. A few days after the end of the fighting of the Second World War in the area of Vienna in the middle of April, the Soviet Army created a new city administration. Political parties also formed - even before the war on 8 May had finally come to an end in Europe. It was only in the autumn of 1945 that the Soviets provided other areas of Vienna to be administered by the military contingents of the United States and Great Britain with a sop to France. It remained then until 1955 "Viersektorenstadt." In the first district, which was not assigned to any of the four occupying powers, the crew changed every month. On the Schwarzenbergplatz, the southern part of which was called Stalinplatz in 1946-1956, the Red Army built the monument, the monument of liberty, the monument of the Red Army, or monument to the Red Army in 1945. It was unveiled on 19 August 1945 and has since been maintained by the city administration.

Ecstatic citizens of Vienna were waiting for Hitler until finally at around half past five in the afternoon on March 14, 1938, he entered the city that had once been the capital of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, passing the Schönbrunn Palace. The church bells here also chimed for him, and “the demonstrations of enthusiasm that accompanied Hitler’s entry into the city defied description,” as the Neue Basler Zeitung wrote. Hitler stayed here at the imperial Hotel at the Ring. Since the jubilations and the chorus of the crowd outside of the hotel would not abate, Hitler stepped onto the balcony around 19.00 together with the aged Austrian General Krauss and delivered a short address:

My German Volksgenossen!

What you are feeling now is something I myself have felt to the bottom of my heart in these five days. It is a great, historic change which our German Volk has undergone. What you are witnessing at this moment is something the whole German Volk is experiencing with you; not only two million people in this city, but seventy-five million members of our Volk, in one Reich. They are all deeply stirred and moved by this historic turning point, and they all consecrate themselves with the vow: no matter what may happen, the German Reich as it stands today is something no man will ever again break asunder and no man will ever again tear apart!
There is no crisis, no threat, and no force that might break this vow. Today these are the devout words of all German beings from Königsberg to Cologne, from Hamburg to Vienna!

Hitler's motorcade approaching the rathaus whilst, on March 15 at around 11:00 a.m., hundreds of thousands of people assembled on the Heldenplatz in front of the Hofburg to hear a “proclamation of liberation.” Two little boys greeted Hitler upon his arrival. Between them they carried a banner which bore the slogan: “The Sudeten Germans greet the Führer.”

On the balcony of the Hofburg, Hitler gave the following address:

Germans! Men and Women!Within
a few short days, a radical change has taken place in the German
Volksgemeinschaft, whose dimensions we might see today, yet whose
significance can only be fully appreciated by coming generations. In the
past few years, the rulers of the regime which has now been banished
often spoke of the special “mission” which, in their eyes, this country
was destined to fulfil. A leader of the legitimists outlined it quite
accurately in a memorandum. Accordingly, the so-called self-sufficiency
of this Land of Austria, founded in the peace treaties and contingent
upon the mercy of foreign countries, was to perform the function of
preventing the formation of a genuinely great German Reich and hence
block the path of the German Volk to the future.I hereby declare for
this Land its new mission. It corresponds to the precept which once
summoned the German settlers of the Altreich to come here. The oldest
Ostmark of the German Volk shall from now on constitute the youngest
bulwark of the German nation and hence of the German Reich. For
centuries, the storms of the East broke on the borders of the Old Mark
in the turbulent times of the past. For centuries into the future, it
shall now become an iron guarantor of the security and freedom of the
German Reich, and hence a safeguard for the happiness and peace of our
Great Volk. I know the old Ostmark of the German Reich will do justice
to its new task just as it once performed and mastered the old.I am
speaking on behalf of millions of people in this magnificent German
Land, on behalf of those in Styria, in Upper and Lower Austria, in
Carinthia, in Salzburg, in Tirol, and above all on behalf of the city of
Vienna, when I assure the sixty-eight million other German
Volksgenossen in our vast Reichlistening this very minute: this Land
is German; it has understood its mission, it will fulfil this mission,
and it shall never be outdone by anyone as far as loyalty to the great
German Volksgemeinschaft is concerned. It will now be our task to devote
our labour, diligence, shared dedication, and joint strength to solving
the great social, cultural and economic problems; yet first and foremost
to make Austria ever grow and expand to become a fortress of National
Socialist willpower.I cannot conclude this address to you without
calling to mind those men who, together with me, have made it possible
to bring about this great change— with God’s help—in such a short time. I
may thank the National Socialist members of the government, with the
new Reichsstatthalter Seyss-Inquart at their fore. I may thank the
innumerable party functionaries; I may thank above all the countless
anonymous idealists, the fighters of our formations who have proven in
the long years of persecution that the German, when put under pressure,
only becomes tougher.These years of suffering have served but to
strengthen me in my conviction of the value of the German-Austrian being
within the framework of our great Volksgemeinschaft. At the same time,
however, the splendid order and discipline of this tremendous event is
proof of the power of the idea inspiring these people. Hence in this
hour, I can report to the German Volk that the greatest orders of my
life have been carried out.As the Führer and Chancellor of the
German nation and the Reich, I now report to history that my homeland
has joined the German Reich.

The Nazi flag flying at the Austrian chancellery building on March 11, 1938. That afternoon at 17.00, the “adviser of the Reich Chancellor, Engineer Wilhelm Keppler,” who Kershaw describes as "a one-time small businessman," flew into Vienna on a special flight, landed at the Aspern Airport, and from there immediately drove to the Federal Chancellery. Around the same time, a train pulled into the West Train Station in Vienna, bearing aboard the “Reich Chancellor’s Deputy, Reich Minister Rudolf Hess.” He proceeded to the Federal Chancellery for consultations immediately upon arrival. As officially reported, on March 12 at 5.00 a.m., the Reichsführer SS Himmler arrived in Vienna, coming from Munich. Among others he was accompanied by: the Chief of the Security Police, SS Gruppenführer Heydrich; and by the Chief of the Civil Police, SS Obergruppenführer General Daluege.

The Loos Haus during the Anschluß
The Wehrmacht marching past the parliament building

Hitler driving through Vienna with the Burgtheater in the background.

After the war during the Allied Occupation of Austria, Schönbrunn Palace was requisitioned to provide offices for both the British Delegation to the Allied Commission for Austria and for the Headquarters for the British Military Garrison present in Vienna.

Döbling

Just north of Vienna with the Leopoldsberg in the background. During the Weimar republic the Social Democrats had planned and established many blocks of public housing, siedlungen of which the Karl-Marx-Hof is one of the largest. The suburb of Döbling had a high percentage of Jewish residents and maintained a synagogue in the district. During the Reichskristallnacht this synagogue (like almost all others in Vienna) was destroyed. The harbour itself only ever became economically important for the logging industry and after the war it was converted into a marina for rowing clubs and motorboats. This was not before the Russian raping and looting that took place in which

[a] boon to the Russians and the looters were the big wine houses in Döbling and Heiligenstadt. The Russians emptied the great tun in Klosterneuburg and then sprayed it with machine- gun fire when it would provide them with no more solace. People were seen carrying off wine from Heiligenstadt in large vessels... (MacDonogh, 30)
‘The great provision of wine and schnapps in Vienna, above all in the vineyard areas, possibly provided a foundation for the raping of the women when it took place.’ It is true that some of the most aggravated instances were in the great cellars of Döbling, where Austrian sparkling wine or Sekt is made, and the wine ‘village’ of Grinzing. (33)

Salzburg

Austrians celebrating the German army's entry into Salzburg via the Staatsbrücke on March 12, 1938.

The Mirabellgarten and Mozartdenkmal with the wife today. On August 9, 1939 Hitler attended a performance of Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni at the Salzburg music festival which was the first time he participated in this particular event. To judge by his reported demeanour there could truly not be a large-scale military conflict looming on the horizon.

Innsbruck

Nazi flags on the former Adolf-Hitler-Platz (now Hofburgplatz) and Herzog-Friedrich-Straße with its Goldenem Dachl and today.

Maria-Theresien-Straße

During the anschluß and on the occasion of Hitler's visit on April 5, 1939. Hitler would return March 18, 1940 when his train stopped over ifor him to to review an honour guard. According to the Party newspaper, he was “very touched by the enthusiasm demonstrated by the Tiroleans.” Significantly, they sang the “Englandlied” to greet him.

Kitzbühel

Kitzbuehel was fortunate to be spared from destruction in the First and Second World Wars. During the period of National Socialism from 1938 to 1945, Kitzbuhel was a holiday destination among leading national socialists. Albert Speer, Hermann Göring and Leni Riefenstahl were guests; Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop bought a farm in the village of Bichlach. At the same time, a communist resistance group organized in Kitzbühel, with connections to Berlin's Robert Uhrig. Five members of the group, Anton Rausch, Andreas Obernauer, Joseph Pair, Viktor da Pont and Ignaz Zloczower, were arrested and murdered in 1942 after being spied on by the Gestapo.

St. Pölten

Adolf-Hitler-Platz, so-named from 1938-1946, and today. Today rathausplatz, it had been renamed Marschallplatz after the war until 1955.

Bad Radkersburg

Bad Radkersburg, on the Slovenian border (where it is known as Radgona). In the course of the 19th century language conflict, nationalist struggles in the ethnically mixed area arose between the predominantly German-speaking citizens and the Slovene-speaking peasant population down the Mur River. A garrison town of the Austro-Hungarian Army during the Great War, it was occupied by troops of the newly emerged Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Yugoslavia) on 1 December 1918. An armed revolt against the occupation forces, led by Johann Mickl, in order to affiliate the town with German-Austria failed. Nevertheless, by resolution of the 1919 Treaty of Saint-Germain, the area north of the Mur passed to the First Austrian Republic, while Oberradkersburg (Gornja Radgona) and the neighbouring municipality of Apače (Abstall), on the south bank, became part of Yugoslavia. The nationalist conflicts lingered on, on both sides of the border. In World War II many members of the German minority greeted the Wehrmacht invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941 and joined the German combat units, while large parts of Radkersburg were devastated by armed conflicts. After the war, most of the remaining German-speaking population south of the Mur was forcibly expelled.

Amstetten

The town hall on the former Adolf-Hitler-Platz

The Seegrotte in Hinterbrühl bei Mödling has changed besides the flags it flies

Kufstein

Nazi flag on the Römerhofgaße in front of the Auracher Löchl. In 1938 Kufstein became the connection of Austria to the German Reichkreisstadt in the Gau Tirol-Vorarlberg. Shortly before the end of the Second World War, the city was bombed and attacked with artillery, destroying many historic buildings. After the end of the war, Kufstein was occupied by the Americans and the French.

On the Italian-Austrian border during the war and today.

Gröbming

Adolf-Hitler-Platz and today

Waizenkirchen

Adolf Hitler Platz and today; the fountain remains

Bad Leonfelden

Schloss Brunnwald, built between 1724-1727 in the midst of a forest as an hunting lodge. A fire in 1898 badly damaged it but by 1905 it had been rebuilt. In 1939 the castle was confiscated by the Nazis to serve as an NSV Müttererholungsheim. After the war services were held for the large number of refugees within.

Friesach

Nazi flags flying from the Hotel Friesacher Hof and the town today

Kapfenberg

Adolf-Hitler-Platz with the Altes Rathaus then and now. After the annexation of Austria in 1938, Kapfenberg's industrial facilities were expanded and expanded to meet the requirements of the massive military rearmament. Since the area around the main plant in the valley of the Thörlbach offered too little space, construction of the plant VI in the north-east of the city was begun. Additional underground tunneling systems, some of which are still preserved, were built in order to be able to continue production in an emergency. Böhler also founded the non-profit Mürz-Ybbs-Siedlungs-A.G in 1938. (GEMYSAG), which began with the construction of the Hochschwab settlement. In 1943, with the support of Böhler, the municipality decided to found a trolleybus company, Mürzaler Verkehrsgesellschaft m.b.H. (MVG). Soon after the Anschluss, the Antifascist Front, a resistance movement with about one hundred members, formed in Kapfenberg. One of the most important organizers was Anton Buchalka, who was executed in 1941 in Berlin. For the large number of war prisoners and forced labourers who were employed in war production at Boehler, several barracks camps were erected at the Schirmitzbühel, near the plant VI, in Hafendorf and Winkl. From November 1944 to May 1945, the facilities of Böhler, the station and the freight station were attacked several times by Allied bombers in Kapfenberg. After the end of the war, the city was occupied by Soviet soldiers on 9 May 1945, who were then fortunately replaced by British occupiers on July 24 1945. A DP camp was set up for about 600 Jewish and non-Jewish so-called displaced persons. The destruction of the industrial infrastructure by bombing and dismantling of the facilities by the Victory Powers was considerable. In July 1946, under the federal government of Figl, the nationalisation of, among other things, the Böhler works took place, in order to prevent further confiscation of the industrial plants by the occupying powers.

Lienz

Adolf-Hitler-Platz with the Nazi Eagle-topped memorial and today. After the First World War the southern parts of the former Cisleithanian crown land of Tyrol (Trentino and South Tyrol) were awarded to the Kingdom of Italy under the terms of the London Pact and the 1919 Treaty of Saint-Germain, making the Lienz district of East Tyrol an exclave with no territorial connection to the mainland of North Tyrol. As a result of this and the effects of the economic crisis, the number of unemployed rose massively in Lienz. It was only from 1937 that an improvement in the employment figures could be observed. Modest growth in tourism was hampered by the imposition of the Thousand-Mark barrier, and greater investment in tourism remained in Lienz as a result. With the opening of the new building of the district hospital in 1931, however, an important infrastructure project could be realised. In 1936, the Lienzer garrison was also installed and the modernisation of the city began in the 1920s. From the February fighting in the course of the Austrian Civil War in 1934 Lienz was spared, but the Lienzer garrison was used in the crushing of the fighting in neighbouring Carinthia. In the 1930s, the NSDAP succeeded in gaining a foothold in East Tyrol, albeit only to a modest extent. In 1933, 150 Lienzers were still members of the NSDAP, with the share of Nazi members being comparatively low compared to other surrounding municipalities.

After the 1938 Anschluss of the Federal State of Austria into Nazi
Germany, the Lienz district became a part of the "Reichsgau" of
Carinthia and with it the integration of the population into
the Nazi organisations. The four believing Jews
were expelled from Lienz as early as 1938; in Lienz, according to the
racist classification of the national socialists, two families, whose
members were partially classified as "full or half Jews". Although two
members of one of these families were to be deported to Dachau for
several weeks, the families were not killed by
the Nazi persecution although at least twelve were eventually murdered in concentration camps or were poisoned.
The annexation of East
Tyrol to the Gau Carinthia took place in October 1938. Lienz also experienced
population growth through the settlement of several hundred South
Tyroleans, who had decided to resettle in the German Reich. For the new arrivals the so-called South Tyrolean
settlement was built in typical Nazi construction.
Towards the end of the war, several bomb attacks on Lienz occurred, the first attack on June 13, 1944, meeting the district of Peggetz. As a result, the population was often destroyed by minor and major bombings, with the heaviest bombings taking place on February 5 and April 26, 1945. A total of about 1000 bombs were dropped on Lienz, killing 13 people and destroying 19 buildings, including the station. 30 buildings were also heavily damaged, twelve medium and 41 slightly damaged. Altogether about 360 Lienzers were killed in the war.

On May 8, 1945 victorious British forces occupied Lienz, which together with Carinthia and Styria became part of the British occupation zone. At this time several thousand members of the former Wehrmacht 1st Cossack Division coming from Yugoslavia had arrived in and around Lienz. They surrendered to the British troops but were forcibly repatriated to the Soviet Union. These Cossacks
who had fought alongside the Germans had been saved
from Soviet troops in a British-controlled area. The Cossacks,
however, were handed over to Soviet units by the British army in June
1945, and hundreds of Cossacks died by suicide or were killed in the
"tragedy on the Drava."

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